Let's talk about conclave.

[VenomousValentine]

No wait, don't lynch me yet.

Look, a lot of people seem to think conclave doesn't fit in this game. And frankly I think that's absurd, because with the amount of mobility and skill that one can pull off in this game, it adds a whole new element to the shooter genre that 99.9% of pvp shooters do not have. 

The truth is, I feel like nobody plays pvp, not because they dislike pvp, but because the pvp in this game is BAD.

Before we go further let's look at why I think pvp should be at least a minor focus of DE.

Reason 1: A new crowd of players to appeal to.
Plenty of people do NOT like PVE shooters. This is a LARGE swathe of people alienated by warframe that could be pulled in. Do you know how many destiny players I've met that said "I'd switch to warframe if it had pvp" They didn't even know it had pvp because of how under represented it is. Not that that would matter because it's a S#&$show in it's current state.

Reason 2: A more engaging gameplay loop.
One advantage PVP games has over PVE games is that they don't get stale very easy because of the human element. The challenge is not in code, but in overcoming another player, and every person has a different level of skill and can play completely differently. You have to adapt, and that by it's own right is enough to keep a lot of people enthralled for hundreds of hours. Look at TF2. TF2 has had barely any noteworthy updates for nearly a DECADE and yet it still has a respectable playerbase. (not to say the game doesnt have it's own problem.) But my point is, with a more engaging gameplay option it would prevent burnout from a lot of players and keep them engaged even when the updates aren't quite rolling out consistently. Obviously this doesn't apply to everyone, but it would apply to a LOT of people.

Ultimately those are the biggest two reasons I have for why pvp would be suitable for this game if it were just moderately maintained, and pvp doesn't require a lot of maintenance. Occasional number tweaks, implementation of the new frames and weapons as they come out, and maybe some seasonal rewards or events every now and again. Once the baseline is established, it's really low maintenance. But pvp in it's current state has too many problems to accomplish either of those.

So lets address the problems.

Problem 1: Lack of updates, balance, and maintenance.
that's an easy one. DE isn't a small company anymore. Yeah nobody there has experience or qualifications dealing with a pvp based setting. But the thing is, DE could easily hire a conclave team. And if they did it right, it would easily pay for itself with the new players it would not only pull in, but retain. And by hiring a new devoted team to exclusively PVP, not only would those interested in pvp be getting higher quality updates, it also wouldn't take time or effort away from the mainline devs. PVP players win, Mainline PVE players win, Devs win, everyone happy.
As far of lack of updates go, conclave got its biggest update in years recently. Wanna know what they did? They... Removed ember and vauban. Wowee.
In fact, the most recently released frame you CAN play in conclave is khora. After that came revenant. Wanna know how long ago revenant came out?
AUGUST 23d, 2018
SEVEN warframes have come out since then, all of them unusable in pvp. Because it's completely been abandoned by DE. 

Problem 2: Lack of matchmaking.
I know this is the second point, but it may be MORE important than the first.
Raise your hand if you decided one day "I'm going to try out conclave", queued up, and either didn't find a match, or got matched against people who exclusively play conclave, eviscerated you, and swung around your own entrails like a lasso. And then you probably vowed to never play again after that.
It's a huge problem. Not everyone likes to get kicked in the teeth the first time they try something. Some do, but you're a minority. 
Any pvp game with such a high skill ceiling like warframe NEEDS a matchmaking rating so you are ensured to be matched against players of your skill level at least the majority of the time. and I know what you're gonna say, you're gonna say "but what about smurfs" and well, you have a point. A really small point, but a point. But here's another reason warframe fits pretty well with pvp. A smurf would have to make a new account, get the gear they prefer, and then level up their MMR(matchmaking rating) on their smurf. Which will happen, as is inevitable in any pvp game, HOWEVER it's rare in most pvp games, and due to the nature of warframes grind, I feel would be even rarer here than in games like overwatch or rainbow six.

Problem 3: Lack of Incentive.
Now, this is probably the least important point, but it's still an important point none the less. There is barely any REASON to play pvp besides the fun of it. And news flash, most people don't have fun with it. So there is NO reason to play in its current state.
I would say the best thing to do would be to have plenty of rewards that can be obtained in PVE, but are just about as easy to obtain in PVP within your skill level, and just as needed for pvp. A ten minute round of PVP could give say, 250k credits (comparable to index), 1000 endo (comparable to arbitration), an added bundle of random resources, but a small amount (comparable to 20 or so minutes of farming.)
Or perhaps better, would be to make a shop system like with vitus essence. A round gives a reasonable amount of currency given your performance, Not so much difference so if you do bad you don't feel like it wasn't worth it, but also enough of a difference that skill is rewarded. Maybe a difference of double the currency between the worst player in the match and the best.
Rewards I would suggest available from this shop being things like endo, credits, kuva, every resource, some cosmetics that are attainable elsewhere (such as syndicate syandanas) universal medallions for syndicates, Certain mods that can be obtained elsewhere, conclave exclusive mods that can only be obtained here, etc.
With this system, conclave would not need standing, let alone a daily standing limit. Make rewards minimal so PVE is still the best way to farm these resources unless you are exceptionally skilled, but not so minimal that you feel like you aren't getting your times worth.

Bonus Suggestion: Ranked.
This is where some people may get alienated, but note this isn't super important at all compared to everything else I've said, and should only be implemented well after the rework gets established, if at all.
BUT, People who play pvp like to get good. And people who get good, like to know and show they're good. Ranked is the traditional way to do this. A ranked season could be say six months, give slightly extra pvp currency, and depending on your rank at the end of the season, an exclusive syandana/weapon skin, and bonus currency.
Again, not necessary, but something a lot of people would probably like to see.

Edited February 1, 2020 by VenomousValentine

[Hathena]

This was actually quite a good read

[gwan]

PvP is great in private matches (broken weapons/ abilites ban list, etc...) 

It's sad to see that the community have to setup this kind of measures to band-aid Conclave's lack of balancing, because the gameplay is awesome and it has a lot of potential.

A ranking system would be great too.

[AlmightyPancake]

I'm not entirely in agreement with you on this one here. For one, DE started off as a PvP game developer. In fact, you could almost say that they were a major reason for the popularity of FPS games with Unreal Tournament.

They just don't have much of an incentive to touch conclave as it is. It is sparsely populated, underwhelming and likely to create more toxicity in their game than they want. In addition it is even further removed from the core gameplay loop of the game than Liches are. The reason that there is a lack of matchmaking is because no one is going to be willing to sit in a queue for 30+ minutes just to be able to play with people around the same skill level. Which is another issue with conclave. The skill floor to be even a bit decent at it is too high for most people who play warframe. As is stands now I very much doubt there will ever be any significant changes to conclave.

[baked]

good S#&$. i doubt they'll hire a new team but i can hope. as long as it's less cheese than it currently is. tried destiny's pvp but it didn't appeal to me at all.

[VenomousValentine]

1 minute ago, AlmightyPancake said:

I'm not entirely in agreement with you on this one here. For one, DE started off as a PvP game developer. In fact, you could almost say that they were a major reason for the popularity of FPS games with Unreal Tournament.

They just don't have much of an incentive to touch conclave as it is. It is sparsely populated, underwhelming and likely to create more toxicity in their game than they want. In addition it is even further removed from the core gameplay loop of the game than Liches are. The reason that there is a lack of matchmaking is because no one is going to be willing to sit in a queue for 30+ minutes just to be able to play with people around the same skill level. Which is another issue with conclave. The skill floor to be even a bit decent at it is too high for most people who play warframe. As is stands now I very much doubt there will ever be any significant changes to conclave.

See, if the gameplay is good, there won't be a 30 minute queue because people will actually be playing it.

[AlmightyPancake]

1 minute ago, VenomousValentine said:

See, if the gameplay is good, there won't be a 30 minute queue because people will actually be playing it.

That was only one of the issues that conclave has. And it's not entirely solved just by making the gameplay good. For one there is still the matter of that incredibly high skill floor, as well as the fact that anyone wanting to try out this new "better gameplay" will more than likely get matched against veterans of the game mode thanks to that low player count. That still leaves that scenario of new players trying out conclave once and never again.

If DE ever wants to properly support conclave and improve it, they would have to sink an enormous amount of resources into it (eg. an entire update and event devoted to it like what happened with disruption). But, that is a hell of a lot of investment for something that has a high risk of returning to irrelevancy.

[-Degu]

22 minutes ago, VenomousValentine said:

Reason 1: A new crowd of players to appeal to.

I also belive that Warframe could catch some of that PvP pie, especially when it offers such an unique experience.
Disregarding that would be really wasteful, I'm sure that if polished, Conclave can be appealing to way more people.

 

22 minutes ago, VenomousValentine said:

Reason 2: A more engaging gameplay loop.

Conclave kept me playing Warframe for around 2 years now, most of the other misc. content was either trivial and bloated, or really enjoyable but compact and lacked replay value.
I'm glad that people can see the value of what I experienced, it is a shame to see so many people quit after geting done with the curent available PvE content, and never returning.
It is great to have some content that you can play in-between PvE releases.

26 minutes ago, VenomousValentine said:

Problem 1: Lack of updates, balance, and maintenance.

One of the greatest problems that PvP is currently facing, a lot of PvE change bleed over to PvP and disrupt the already flimsy balance.
No updates also mean that bugs and glitches that could be trivial to fix, go unaddressed. Black screen loop, a glitch that made a whole region unplayable, 
hydroid panthera glitch, telos boltace, and many, many more broken "features" that got into conclave through PvE updates.

32 minutes ago, VenomousValentine said:

Problem 2: Lack of matchmaking.

Please, fix.
Having to use your friendlist to "matchmake" with people is annoying, and really not something PvP players should have to do in order to play the game.

35 minutes ago, VenomousValentine said:

Problem 3: Lack of Incentive.

This is a problematic problem, there is a very vocal part of the community that will raise pitchforks if anything related to PvE gets added into PvP.
If you could get anything valuable through conclave, we would see a civil war. While adding some proper rewards to PvP would definitely liven it up, 
many people will scream, a lot.

38 minutes ago, VenomousValentine said:

Bonus Suggestion: Ranked.

Very interesting suggestion, probably not worth to implement it right now, as there are many balancing issues, and on top the playerbase is low.
But, if PvP takes off, I would love to see it included. Conclave has a very, very high skill ceiling, perfect for a competetive PvP game.

Very cool post, and on a controversial topic. Sweet!

[VenomousValentine]

1 minute ago, AlmightyPancake said:

That was only one of the issues that conclave has. And it's not entirely solved just by making the gameplay good. For one there is still the matter of that incredibly high skill floor, as well as the fact that anyone wanting to try out this new "better gameplay" will more than likely get matched against veterans of the game mode thanks to that low player count. That still leaves that scenario of new players trying out conclave once and never again.

If DE ever wants to properly support conclave and improve it, they would have to sink an enormous amount of resources into it (eg. an entire update and event devoted to it like what happened with disruption). But, that is a hell of a lot of investment for something that has a high risk of returning to irrelevancy.

Conclave doesn't have a high skill floor. It has a high skill ceiling. Big difference. Mobas and RTS have a high skill floor.

[Neuroszima]

I stated it in a few threads befroe so lemme just compile what i wrote in a few places in short points, and add some new ones

55 minutes ago, VenomousValentine said:

Bonus Suggestion: Ranked.

• ^ this, ranking, 4-stage ladder system, with modding selections reduced to bronze mods, 2nd rank up to silver and 3/4 rank gold included, with each conclave mission rewarding mods based on the given tier
• include optional Nightwave PvP challenges. Example: (PvE) Kill Profit Taker, or (PvP) kill one Tenno enemy in Conclave with sniper rifle headshot.
• (other person mention) Server browser, with min, max, avg, ping statistics visible, to reflect server stability at least a little (also capacity/mode, for example 3/8 FFA)
• (other person mention) Seasonal events - Snowball/Opticor variant, back in the game
• Kovaak-FPS-aim-trainer-like arena practice mode with bots to train aim/dodging, with simillar to lunaro consoles with tips on how to improve, where to shoot, what to be aware of.

those are i think one of the few additions i would like to see

But ofc yeah, balance first, and it doesn't take that much effort imo

EDIT: one can also put veterans to already higher ranks on launch based on their performance/kills from profile stats

Edited February 1, 2020 by Neuroszima

[AlmightyPancake]

2 minutes ago, VenomousValentine said:

Conclave doesn't have a high skill floor. It has a high skill ceiling. Big difference. Mobas and RTS have a high skill floor.

Conclave has a much higher skill floor than almost any other PvP shooter game, simply due to the extreme mobility that every player has. If someone isn't constantly on the move it makes them easy to snipe off. So constantly bullet jumping and rolling around is the only way to stay relatively safe. However that complicates precise aiming, which isn't actually that much of an issue in PvE, where the enemies are more often than not grounded and not able to move anywhere near as fast as us. But now the enemy is someone else who is constantly using our insane mobility to stay alive and out of danger. Name any other PvP shooter game that has as much speed or freedom of movement as Warframe does.

There are ways to get around this currently, of course. Some weapons make accurate aim and predictions irrelevant and can also one-shot enemies, and so can just cheese their way to a win. But if we're talking about fixing conclave then obviously all of the weapons would be balanced so that they can't do this anymore, and we're back at where we started.

[VenomousValentine]

1 minute ago, AlmightyPancake said:

Conclave has a much higher skill floor than almost any other PvP shooter game, simply due to the extreme mobility that every player has. If someone isn't constantly on the move it makes them easy to snipe off. So constantly bullet jumping and rolling around is the only way to stay relatively safe. However that complicates precise aiming, which isn't actually that much of an issue in PvE, where the enemies are more often than not grounded and not able to move anywhere near as fast as us. But now the enemy is someone else who is constantly using our insane mobility to stay alive and out of danger. Name any other PvP shooter game that has as much speed or freedom of movement as Warframe does.

There are ways to get around this currently, of course. Some weapons make accurate aim and predictions irrelevant and can also one-shot enemies, and so can just cheese their way to a win. But if we're talking about fixing conclave then obviously all of the weapons would be balanced so that they can't do this anymore, and we're back at where we started.

I would say siege would still be harder than reworked conclave. the difference is one is strategy and the other is fast twitch muscle fiber.

[AlmightyPancake]

I mean, I don't think it's entirely fair to compare those two different types of difficulty. I haven't played Siege, but from what I know it is a rather difficult game due to the strategy required, like you said. So yes, in that case it would be harder than conclave. But in terms of mechanical difficulty? Warframe would beat it hands down.\

 

I think, if DE ever decided to seriously look at conclave, they should first address the insane amounts of mobility that we have. Maybe revert conclave movement mechanics to the old parkour system?

Edited February 1, 2020 by AlmightyPancake

[VenomousValentine]

2 minutes ago, AlmightyPancake said:

I mean, I don't think it's entirely fair to compare those two different types of difficulty. I haven't played Siege, but from what I know it is a rather difficult game due to the strategy required, like you said. So yes, in that case it would be harder than conclave. But in terms of mechanical difficulty? Warframe would beat it hands down.\

 

I think, if DE ever decided to seriously look at conclave, they should first address the insane amounts of mobility that we have. Maybe revert conclave movement mechanics to the old parkour system?

But having a high skill floor wouldnt matter with a good matchmaking system. if your only adversary is another player, and you get matched against equally rated opponents, neither side has an advantage, so does the actually difficulty of the game mechanics matter if both parties are equally terrible at it?

[AlmightyPancake]

Just now, VenomousValentine said:

But having a high skill floor wouldnt matter with a good matchmaking system. if your only adversary is another player, and you get matched against equally rated opponents, neither side has an advantage, so does the actually difficulty of the game mechanics matter if both parties are equally terrible at it?

The issue is that you can't make a matchmaking system that only ever matches you against people who are exactly as skilled as you are. This is fine in other, PvP only or PvP-centric games because they are drawing from a pool of thousands, tens of thousands of people looking for a match simultaneously. Whereas, as a PvE focused game, there are never likely to be more than a few hundred people playing conclave at a time, maybe a few thousand if it is really popular. At that point, what do you prioritise? Faster queue times with greater deviation in skill expression, or try harder to match people with similar skills, which may take significantly longer? Either way a lot of people are going to be dissatisfied with it.

[-Degu]

4 minutes ago, AlmightyPancake said:

Conclave has a much higher skill floor than almost any other PvP shooter game, simply due to the extreme mobility that every player has. If someone isn't constantly on the move it makes them easy to snipe off. So constantly bullet jumping and rolling around is the only way to stay relatively safe. However that complicates precise aiming, which isn't actually that much of an issue in PvE, where the enemies are more often than not grounded and not able to move anywhere near as fast as us. But now the enemy is someone else who is constantly using our insane mobility to stay alive and out of danger. Name any other PvP shooter game that has as much speed or freedom of movement as Warframe does.

There are ways to get around this currently, of course. Some weapons make accurate aim and predictions irrelevant and can also one-shot enemies, and so can just cheese their way to a win. But if we're talking about fixing conclave then obviously all of the weapons would be balanced so that they can't do this anymore, and we're back at where we started.

High skill floor would mean that it would be relatively easy to fight an experienced player, even if you are a newbie. 

Believe me when I say this, it is not. 

Go ahead and try it! Ask someone who has spent significant time in the conclave to 1v1 you with mirrored loadouts. 

I've seen people that I wiped floors with, destroy entire lobbies of newbies without a hitch. 

The skill floor is low, and contrary to popular belief, high mobility if used incorrectly will just make you lose even harder against good players. Why? Quite simple really, to move quick, especially with rolls and basic bulletjumps, you often make your movement linear, and you will get destroyed, even more so if you add the +mobility mods. Trust me, I learned the hard way. Good players know how to counter mobility, because you trade off offensive capabilities for defensive capabilities. They can literally stand in one place and focus purely on aiming. You can't really shoot back, because you will miss a considerable % of your shots, and it is especially true for new players. This effect snowballs, they will get free damage on you, so you will try to move faster in order to not die, so even less focus on aiming. You need to be good in conclave to make proper use of mobility, or you will just get melted by a karak in 0.333 seconds, or headshotted by a rubico. 

[AlmightyPancake]

2 minutes ago, -Degu said:

High skill floor would mean that it would be relatively easy to fight an experienced player, even if you are a newbie. 

Believe me when I say this, it is not. 

Go ahead and try it! Ask someone who has spent significant time in the conclave to 1v1 you with mirrored loadouts. 

I've seen people that I wiped floors with, destroy entire lobbies of newbies without a hitch. 

The skill floor is low, and contrary to popular belief, high mobility if used incorrectly will just make you lose even harder against good players. Why? Quite simple really, to move quick, especially with rolls and basic bulletjumps, you often make your movement linear, and you will get destroyed, even more so if you add the +mobility mods. Trust me, I learned the hard way. Good players know how to counter mobility, because you trade off offensive capabilities for defensive capabilities. They can literally stand in one place and focus purely on aiming. You can't really shoot back, because you will miss a considerable % of your shots, and it is especially true for new players. This effect snowballs, they will get free damage on you, so you will try to move faster in order to not die, so even less focus on aiming. You need to be good in conclave to make proper use of mobility, or you will just get melted by a karak in 0.333 seconds, or headshotted by a rubico. 

A low skill floor would make that true. Or a low skill ceiling. There are far more things to pay attention to and master before you can even be considered decent.

A good example is one that you provided yourself. You say that a good player is able to know when to stand still or move, and can move better and less predictably than a newbie when they need to. There are more things to consider, I'm sure. But compared to other PvP shooters conclave has a steeper barrier to entry (Like you said, people who are only decent can decimate newbies) and a much steeper learning curve (you can wipe the floor with said decent player).

 

I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on all things conclave, but just from my experiences it is much harder to get to a point where you are even okay at it than any other game I've played, including base Warframe.

[Neuroszima]

33 minutes ago, VenomousValentine said:

I would say siege would still be harder than reworked conclave. the difference is one is strategy and the other is fast twitch muscle fiber.

Not true at all actually, I will agree with @AlmightyPancake, and as a fresh - ANNIHILATION Conclave player i will cast some light on this matter and share my skill development process as it was untill now.

It all started when I started playing lunaro. It was very hard for me to do anything, because there are two things that practice mode for lunaro doesn't teach you. Those are scoring unstables, and how to do the dribble.

I started by joining the Lunaro discord server, as one of the veterans just stomped me 16-0, when he clearly could do about 22-0, but he was just toying with me. He said, "hey you tried your best, mbe you want be better". I accepted the challenge. From then on, i basically had to figure out everything myself. Well, mbe not entirely, but i had to figure out everything by just looking how others play from the look of a person that just stands by. There aren't any videos that teach this properly from 0-100%. It took me about a month to figure out how to do unstables reliably and i still performed very poorly and lost to EVERYONE. It didn't matter what i did, nothing worked, I was very predictable and my skill lacked. I was mostly playing as a host, with no reaction delay, so you can imagine how, even 100 ping, destroyed basically everything i learned in practice mode, and everything that i practiced with for hours, only to make the ground unstable, or the one from air, more reliable. It felt terrible after several dozens of matches lost in a row with no victory. And you know what? I still can't beat anyone, after about 4-5 months, because of how much of a gap it is to play against a pro players.

After lunaro basically got destroyed by U26, this was the beginning of my journey with conclave annihilations. I started joining random public matches of 1vAll, when someone invited me to general conclave server. I was getting destroyed again, 25-0, 20-0, 15-0. I couldn't aim at people at any point with nothing. I was lucky when there was a player that played this mode CoD-like - basically standing and doing ADAD moves, since i could groundslam him, or have at least a Chance of shooting that guy. After that i met some people willing to help me, which basically were acting like "..." when saw my aim. You know why is it hard to learn this properly? Because you die to pro players before you even stick your crosshair onto any of them. I had to basically go outside of game, start my adventure with aim-trainer, to get proper tracking/click-timing excercises. With no downtime, as my usual lifespan in conclave is 2 seconds, and i wait 20 to watch killcam, select loadout, respawn, find my next target and die again, not even getting a Chance to train aiming. Add bulletjumps, doublejumps, rolling in any direction you can possibly make, YOUR OWN MOVEMENT that you have to compensate in order to even hit someone standing once, but making them harder to hit you, and you get yourself a cluster!@*)(^!$@AMP of an action that none other PvP shooter on the market has. And that's just a movement system that i covered, not even Warframe passives/abilities/a little bit of modding and so on...

Aim trainer helped me a lot, it's initial boost helped me with tracking SOOO much i was basically able to hit people. But to get outside of the game, to get myself a proper training, because whenever you try to train aiming in-game, you have only 2 seconds if you are noob and you die? It is not training at all. You don't progres fast. You have to be already good at tracking/click-timing (flicks and all that stuff) from other games, which i didn't have much experience in. since in other games, like BF1 I also die, but those are as well more static sometimes (camping ftw in a few maps if you know spots, etc.).

Hope this will bring up some light FOR EVERYONE so that you can see my path to being better. I propably have an enormous mental capacity to endure what i do in here. And balance issues doesn't help with learning how to aim at people at all. I have to endure what other pro players have to endure in public matches - melee spammers, Hydroid cheesers, spin2winners. But do i have a means and wits to fight them? hell no. I am just a noob that tries my best. And still fails and fails.

That is the ultimate experience of conclave right now. From my perspective. If you want a video proof just ask, i will post anything you would like to see. I upload daily basis from conclave.

Also i hope my 1000K/2000D that still grows will convince you at least a little that I actually DID TRY conclave, as a whole, lunaro/annihilations.

Edited February 1, 2020 by Neuroszima

[-Degu]

19 minutes ago, AlmightyPancake said:

A low skill floor would make that true. Or a low skill ceiling. There are far more things to pay attention to and master before you can even be considered decent.

A good example is one that you provided yourself. You say that a good player is able to know when to stand still or move, and can move better and less predictably than a newbie when they need to. There are more things to consider, I'm sure. But compared to other PvP shooters conclave has a steeper barrier to entry (Like you said, people who are only decent can decimate newbies) and a much steeper learning curve (you can wipe the floor with said decent player).

 

I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on all things conclave, but just from my experiences it is much harder to get to a point where you are even okay at it than any other game I've played, including base Warframe.

Exactly, and that is why Conclave would be good for a competetive shooter. 

High skill ceiling, low skill floor. 

In Conclave you have very little to stand on besides your skills, and some of the op/"nooby" weapons (ex. Ignis/Plasmor/Dual swords.) you have barely anything that you can grasp to hold yourself against the higher skilled players. It's a very binary, adrenaline fueled experience. In some games you are the apex predator, and in some you are the prey.

For me, in an ideal state, Conclave would be pure skill against pure skill. Ultimate test of wits and hand-eye coordination. Lose hard or win big, the more you play, the more you win. 

In some rare cases, that's what Conclave is, and for those matches I started playing, and I kept playing. 

Edited February 1, 2020 by -Degu

[Stormdragon]

1 hour ago, AlmightyPancake said:

They just don't have much of an incentive to touch conclave as it is. It is sparsely populated, underwhelming [...]

There are 2 ways to get around the "sparsely populated"problem. One of them is to do nothing and keep the statu quo, the other one is figuting out what's wrong with it and doing your best to change that situation. The latter one benefits everyone since this way there is more stuff to do and with a better quality while with the former the content just lies there with low player engagement and going in a downward spiral because of developer's inaction.

Quote

and likely to create more toxicity in their game than they want

I've seen a lot more toxicity in PvE than in PvP and that's despite the "cooperative" nature of PvE missions. 

PvP players just want other players to get good in order to have fun matches with equal people while respecting our enemies and even helping them so they keep coming back and getting stronger every time they do. With that out of the way, most (if not all) of the toxicity i've seen in conclave comes from PvE players who don't care about the mode but want the rewards without any effort or improvement.

1 hour ago, AlmightyPancake said:

If DE ever wants to properly support conclave and improve it, they would have to sink an enormous amount of resources into it (eg. an entire update and event devoted to it like what happened with disruption). But, that is a hell of a lot of investment for something that has a high risk of returning to irrelevancy.

It would also be a one time big effort since after that PvP requires really low maintenance unlike PvE.

57 minutes ago, AlmightyPancake said:

Conclave has a much higher skill floor than almost any other PvP shooter game, simply due to the extreme mobility that every player has.

It actually isn't as hard as many people claim and it can be seen when new players come from other games like Quake, UT, Tribes (these were probably expected), CSGO or OW where players develop some fundamental skills. From this and your statement you should see the real issue:

Warframe's PvE doesn't encourage the player to improve in a mechanical way. There is no need to learn parkour when powers can be used to go from point A to B faster (like wormhole or the pre-nerf CloudWalker); No need to dodge when you can simply be immune to damage or have health regen strong enough to surpass any damage dealt by enemies (Inaros and Hildryn with the respective double HP or shields regen arcane sets come to mind); And no need to aim when you just nuke everything by pressing a single key or certain sequence (add to this last point that warframe has an awfully high sens scaling that most players don't touch and that DE keeps messing randomly and there is another reason why the skill floor is perceived as higher than it actually is)

Which i guess explains why you also say stuff like:

28 minutes ago, AlmightyPancake said:

from my experiences it is much harder to get to a point where you are even okay at it than any other game I've played, including base Warframe.

Base warframe only requires the player to get bigger numbers to beat "harder" content and there is no real challenge in the game once you reach certain point which isn't even the highest possible numbers available for us in the game, which in turn makes anything that requires a small amount of mechanical skill feel a lot harder than it would in any other game.

Edited February 1, 2020 by Stormdragon
Typo

[Neuroszima]

3 minutes ago, Stormdragon said:

Warframe's PvE doesn't enciurage the player to improve in a mechanical way. There is no need to learn parkour when powers can be used to go from point A to B faster (like wormhole or the pre-nerf CloudWalker); No need to dodge when you can simply be immune to damage or have health regen strong enough to surpass any damage dealt by enemies (Inaros and Hildryn with the respective double HP or shields regen arcane sets come to mind); And no need to aim when you just nuke everything by pressing a single key or certain sequence (add to this last point that warframe has an awfully high sens scaling that most players don't touch and that DE keeps messing randomly and there is another reason why the skill floor is perceived as higher than it actually is)

this

Edited February 1, 2020 by Neuroszima

[AlmightyPancake]

7 minutes ago, -Degu said:

Exactly, and that is why Conclave would be good for a competetive shooter. 

High skill ceiling, low skill floor. 

In conclave you have very little to stand on besides your skills, and some of the op/"nooby" weapons (ex. Ignis/Plasmor/Dual swords.) you have barely anything that you can grasp to hold yourself against the higher skilled players. It's a very binary, adrenaline fueled experience. In some games you are the apex predator, and in some you are the prey.

For me, in an ideal state, conclave would be pure skill against pure skill. Ultimate test of wits and hand-eye coordination. Lose hard or win big, the more you play, the more you win. 

In some rare cases, that's what conclave is, and for those matches I started playing, and I kept playing. 

I agree that it would make a good competitive shooter, but I don't agree that it has a low skill floor. Putting aside skills that you can carry over from other games (aiming, tracking, predicting enemy movements and position on the map, etc.), there is a lot in conclave that you have to learn to do well before you can be called decent at the game.

Ideally, conclave would better balance weapons and remove cheese tactics, which might help lower that skill floor a bit because you don't need to worry too much about cheap kills and focus more on improving. But again, the lower player count and getting matched with people much better than you are can also be a turn off for a lot of players.

[-Degu]

11 minutes ago, AlmightyPancake said:

I agree that it would make a good competitive shooter, but I don't agree that it has a low skill floor. Putting aside skills that you can carry over from other games (aiming, tracking, predicting enemy movements and position on the map, etc.), there is a lot in conclave that you have to learn to do well before you can be called decent at the game.

Ideally, conclave would better balance weapons and remove cheese tactics, which might help lower that skill floor a bit because you don't need to worry too much about cheap kills and focus more on improving. But again, the lower player count and getting matched with people much better than you are can also be a turn off for a lot of players.

Oh wait, we are talking about the same thing, it's just we define the skill floor a bit differently, when I say that a game has a low skill floor, I mean to say that it is hard to get into. When you say that it has a high skill floor, you mean the exact same thing. X) 

[AlmightyPancake]

13 minutes ago, Stormdragon said:

There are 2 ways to get around the "sparsely populated"problem. One of them is to do nothing and keep the statu quo, the other one is figuting out what's wrong with it and doing your best to change that situation. The latter one benefits everyone since this way there is more stuff to do and with a better quality while with the former the content just lies there with low player engagement and going in a downward spiral because of developer's inaction.

It would also be a one time big effort since after that PvP requires really low maintenance unlike PvE.

I actually agree with you here. I would honestly love to see conclave become a bigger, more balanced part of Warframe with high player engagement and some decent exclusive rewards. But the problem is that I don't see putting in any effort to make it better because they see it as a high investment low reward process.

19 minutes ago, Stormdragon said:

I've seen a lot more toxicity in PvE than in PvP and that's despite the "cooperative" nature of PvE missions. 

PvP players just want other players to get good in order to have fun matches with equal people while respecting our enemies and even helping them so they keep coming back and getting stronger every time they do. With that out of the way, most (if not all) of the toxicity i've seen in conclave comes from PvE players who don't care about the mode but want the rewards without any effort or improvement.

Ok, this is pretty fair. I haven't interacted much with the dedicated conclave community, so I might have mistaken them for some of the toxicity I've seen in conclave. Sorry about that. Although it still holds that PvP games are more likely to develop toxic communities than PvE ones.

21 minutes ago, Stormdragon said:

It actually isn't as hard as many people claim and it can be seen when new players come from other games like Quake, UT, Tribes (these were probably expected), CSGO or OW where players develop some fundamental skills. From this and your statement you should see the real issue:

Warframe's PvE doesn't enciurage the player to improve in a mechanical way. There is no need to learn parkour when powers can be used to go from point A to B faster (like wormhole or the pre-nerf CloudWalker); No need to dodge when you can simply be immune to damage or have health regen strong enough to surpass any damage dealt by enemies (Inaros and Hildryn with the respective double HP or shields regen arcane sets come to mind); And no need to aim when you just nuke everything by pressing a single key or certain sequence (add to this last point that warframe has an awfully high sens scaling that most players don't touch and that DE keeps messing randomly and there is another reason why the skill floor is perceived as higher than it actually is)

Which i guess explains why you also say stuff like:

Base warframe only requires the player to get bigger numbers to beat "harder" content and there is no real challenge in the game once you reach certain point which isn't even the highest possible numbers available for us in the game.

This is mostly true. I'm sure that someone experienced in other PvP shooter games would have an easier time coming to conclave than someone jumping into competitive shooter games cold. However, that's mostly because some of their learned skills can carry over. To use a MOBA analogy (not entirely accurate, I know. I just have more experience with them than shooters), learning your first character is always going to be harder than learning any other character, because while you are learning that first character's unique mechanics, you also have to learn the overall game's mechanics. After that, because you have learned the general stuff, you can focus more on the next character's unique mechanics.

I definitely agree that base Warframe doesn't incentivise learning how to fully utilise its mobility properly though, I've seen far too many people with hundreds or thousands of hours in the game suck at moving (me included sometimes).

[AlmightyPancake]

5 minutes ago, -Degu said:

Oh wait, we are talking about the same thing, it's just we define the skill floor a bit differently, when I say that a game has a low skill floor, I mean to say that it is hard to get into. When you say that it has a high skill floor, you mean the exact same thing. X) 

LMAO, nice. But then yes, I completely agree with you.